Loading...Here is the second part of my radio “debate” (rather, exchange of views) with Simon Gathercole. To refresh your memory (or in case you didn’t see the earlier post with the first part), Simon is a Senior Lecturer in New Testament at Cambridge University. He is a serious and well-known scholar, and also happens to be an evangelical Christian. We disagree on a lot of things, but we are civil about our disagreements, and I respect his opinions even though I disagree heartily with many of them — especially on the topic at hand! This part of the program focuses more on Paul than on the Gospels. Again, this was recorded for, played on, the program called “Unbelievable” for Christian Premier Radio in the UK (headquarters in London), hosted and moderated by Justin Brierley.
Brought to you in association with www.reasons.org.
Please adjust gear icon for 720p High-Definition:
I had already heard the second part of this debate on youtube and, like the first part of the debate, it is quite interesting although at times I once again had trouble hearing Dr. Gathercole. Dr. Ehrman, in contrast, speaks more clearly into the microphone. Moreover, the differences between the debaters do not seem to be that great. The main trouble I have as a non-scholar In this field is that there is always some cognitive dissonance for me when debaters try to make points by arguing by quoting specific scriptures when I tend to view scripture as having many textual and historical problems and, hence, not being that quotable when it comes to seeing it as evidence for this or that. I do understand that some scripture is more quotable than other scriptures and in many cases that is all the information that we have, but quoting scripture as evidence remains a problem for me.
I know what you mean. I’ve been studying logic along with theology. I’m sure you are aware that the concept you are referring to is “begging the question”
I hear that fallacy being used in conversations all the time; even during debates! Obviously not all people who participate in debates have studied rudimentary logic. If they had, then it would be one of the best weapons they could use!
Congratulations! The “Fresh Air” interview is really clear and was very well done by both you and the interviewer. Dreams are very important both in the Bible and in psychoanalysis. In the Bible, and even in current life, people often consider the people in their dreams to be real people (or angels) actually visiting them. Sometimes, these dreamed people are deceased. So, instead of the early Christians hallucinating Jesus could they have dreamed the presence of Jesus and then considered the dreams to have been real appearances of Jesus?
In the ancient world, people did not make a differentiation between dreams and visions the way we do (as it turns out!). So I don’t know if they were awake at the time or not….
This is great! I love to debate!
One thing for sure is that the purpose of the Bible is 1) not to prove itself! and 2) It isn’t intended to be read by non- believers.
I no longer refer to myself as a “Christian” because the word has been distorted and no longer means what it is supposed to mean! I refer to myself as “born again” because that is what I am.
The New Testament cannot be understood without understanding the Old Testament. “The new is in the old concealed and the old is in the new revealed.
NO ONE IS BORN INTERESTED IN THE GOD OF THE BIBLE!
The reason I say that no one isborn interested in the God of the Bible is because it is true. The Bible makes this crystal clear.
Romans 3:11: None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands, no one seeks God.
All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.
This is in the Old testament as well in Psalm 14
I say the God of the Bible because until you are “born again” you will either make up your own version of God based on what you want God to be or you will deny his existence entirely.
Christianity is not a “religion”. A religion is a belief system that you “choose” to adhere to. I did not “choose” to be born again any more than I chose to be born of my original parents or any more than I choose when I die. God chose me. That is what “born again” is.
John 3:11
“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.
regeneration precedes faith.
What is born of the flesh is flesh, what is born of the spirit is spirit. I was born in the Kingdom of this world which is the Kingdome of Satan. Humans were given dominion over the earth and Satan was given temporary dominion over it. Satan is a spirit and he works through people. God is a spirit who works through people.
The Earth is temporarily cursed until God returns in the form of Jesus the Christ.
Because I was born agian I am no longer in the kingdom of Satan. I am now in the Kingdom of God. My physical body still resides here until God chooses for it not to.
By Gods grace I have been saved. I don’t deserve it. That is why it is called grace. It is a gift. I was a non believer for 45 years. No one in my family is born again and I wasn’t raised in a “Christian Home” . I used to hate the name of Jesus Christ and I used to curse his name and God’s name. Now, I love him and no longer curse him.
I have a relationshiop with the one and only true living God.
Any quesstions?
How do you know you are saved and born again?
Hi Bart –
It was a good pair of shows. I always enjoy your appearances on Unbelievable. After listening to part two there was one point I wanted to ask you about, though.
As you discuss the ‘hymn’ in Philippians, you mention that part of the problem in interpreting the passage is the ambiguity around the word used for ‘grasp’ (as in ‘he did not think equality with God as something to be grasped’). Unfortunately you were cut off at that point in the interview and not able to finish that thought.
So, what word (in Greek, obviously) is used there, and what problems arise?
Thanks!
The Greek word is hARPAGMON; it’s a bit rare, but seems usually to be used for someone wanting to grab something they don’t have (like a purse). My view is that Jesus did not become equal with God until God (more) highly exalted him, at the resurrection.
So more like a ‘snatch’ or ‘obtain’ concept rather than a ‘holding on to.’ Interesting.
Jesus is God in a human form. There is God the father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. One god with different functions. Just as you are a human with a brain, heart, and stomach. They are all a part of the same being but they all have unique functions.
“Persona” is referring to the Greek name for a mask. In stage performances an actor would use different masks to represent different characters. This is why “relativism” when translating the Bible is so detrimental to its interpretation.
There is only one correct interpretation of scripture.
Jesus was 100% man and 100% God. His human form had restrictions just as any human would have. His body couldn’t be at more than one place at a time. God the Spirit is Omnipresent, Omniscient, and Omnipotent. Jesus the Christ has a humble spirit because God is not “self-centered” like we are. Humility isn’t thinking less of yourself but thinking of yourself less. Jesus Christ is talked about so much because he put others before himself.
His resurrected body is a different story. His resurrected body is different in that it is a “spirity body” no longer with the same restrictions. It is theorized that his resurrected body is similar to what “born again” believers will have after Jesus Christ returns to reign over the new earth.
Same word we use for the rapture, Strong’s #725 and #726.
This was a great conversation all-round. I tended to side with your arguments, but I thought Gathercole articulated some excellent alternatives in response.
Professor have many respectable non hard core evangelicals reviewed your book? What sort of feedback have you got? any surprises?
No, it’s too early for any reviews to come out yet.
I listened to the “Trinities Episode 35” interview now available on Youtube which covers a little different ground, especially the first half of the interview, than the “Fresh Air” interview and the two-part debate with Dr. Gathercole. I have no idea how you can keep all this stuff and all of these scriptures in your head nor how you can access all these scriptures spontaneously. The “Trinities Episode 35” interview reminds me a lot of the conflict between Bishops Alexander and Athanasius, on the one hand, and Arius, on the other hand, with each view having supporting scriptures. I still have a reluctance to solve issues by quoting scriptures because it reminds me of a lot about church, all the scripture quoting about women and gays, that I do not like.
Well, it is my job after all. 🙂
Most people are offended by what the Bible says about sinful people because they 1) don’t understand what “Sin” is and 2) they don’t understand what Holiness is.
Sin means to fall short of the Glory of God. God’s character and or Ontology is Holy. Not only is he without sin, but God is unable to sin. This means that he is not capable of telling a lie or not keeping his word. You and I have the ability to lie or tell the truth. God doesn’t have the ability to lie. He always keeps his word. He is perfect justice. He can’t not be just! His love is perfect.
God is in perfect relationship to himself. HE DOES NOT NEED US! He made us for his own good pleasure and to show his love. (the creator is always greater than his creation-look around you. It is very obvious!
The closest that you and I can have to a perfect relationship like God has with himself is through a covenant called marriage. The reason that it is between a man and a woman is because they are opposites in almost evey aspect. This is the closest that humans can get to understanding who God is. Marriage is not just a covenant between the man and woman but also between God and society. That is why it is performed in public.
If a man and woman divorce they are breaking a covenant with all of the above!
If you know anything about construction or plumbing, you will understand that nothing can be built with all male parts or all female parts. There has to be a male and female in order for anything to hold together. Without the two there can be no foundation.
A Homosexual relationship is a rejection of God and of all creation. Two men can’t create a life and two women can’t create a life. Satan likes it this way. His goal is to destroy the family. He hates God and therefore hates Gods creation.He is a liar and doesn’t care about us. God loves us but since his love is perfect it isn’t forced. We either accept his love or reject it……..Free will.
All humans are equal to God. Men and women have different functions. One function isn’t lesser than another but they are uniquely different. If you haven’t noticed, men and women are wired differently!
We are also cursed because of the “fall”. The Bible is so important for wisdom when it comes to this. If we don’t understand what is evil about ourselves and work on correcting these aspects through Gods discipline we are doomed!
Is the Trinities Episode on the Unbelievable podcast?
I have watched some episodes of Unbelievable, most of them featuring you Bart. The thing I like about the podcast is that people with different perspectives are interviewed. If every episode had two Evangelical Christian panelists, I wouldn’t watch it! Ahahaha
Great conversation. Very sober, informative and entertaining. My question for you Dr. Ehrman comes out of this conversation and from my reading of your book: If Paul was writing approximately 40 years or so before John and 10-30 years before the synoptic Gospels, and Paul and possibly some earlier, pre-literary thinking about Jesus understood him to have some type of equality with God (the quoted passages in Romans and Philippians), then would you please explain how the synoptic Gospels, e.g., Mark, seem to express another less developed christology where Jesus was “adopted” by God to be his Son at his baptism, then was God’s son by birth in Luke and Matthew? Were these synoptic writers using different, less developed christologies than Paul? If so, why? how? Were the synoptic writers just not aware of Paul’s writings, particularly his “equality-with-God” christology or not aware of the traditions/thinking of equality with God that Paul was tapping into? Thanks for helping me understand.
Ah, I deal with that in the book! Christology did not develop in the same way at the same time in every place, so different Chrsitains believed different things at the same time….
I think this an important point. We are used to thinking in straight lines when we see one thing at point A and another at point B. As you point out in your book, an exaltation Christology can exist at the same time as an incarnation Christology in different places or among different writers just as a variety of gnostic Christologies developed later (or simultaneously????) in various regions and communities for the next couple of centuries. Heck, two weeks ago my minister had to explain the concept of heresy because the members of my Sunday school started expressing views that would have made Arius smile.
Good discussion. Need to go back to read the book yet again…
When Paul wrote his letters, he did not have the benefit of the gospel stories. so he had none of the doctrine of annunciation, immaculate conception or the singing angels, nor indeed the differing stories of the 4 gospels. so as suppose to say that Paul created Christianity as we know it, might it not have been that the gospel writers magnified their prequel accounts from what Paul had written and fleshed it out to make their stories more compelling? That means the gospel writers were already taking different views from Paul’s teaching to fashion their tenet of the God-Man discourse, where the synoptics took the exaltation view and John alone took the incarnation view?
None of the authors thought their writings were ever to be read side by side when they wrote it, but since the Egyptians made their Pharaohs god, the Greeks had a jolly making men into god and god into men, and the Romans started making their caesars into gods, Jesus was definitely not the first human being hailed by later generations as God, so the idea of man becoming god is a much less fantastic claim than one would imagine nowadays. The difference between Jesus and the other Man-gods was that none of the other ones claim their godship through resurrection! Also, the other traditions required the Man-god to have been a king figure, they have had to be powerful, on the throne, and sometimes even quite mad, where as the Christians hoisted the message of love and peace to back the God claim of Jesus.
Paul said that if there was no resurrection, then the Jesus faith is futile, and that is still the stance of the Church, Orthodox and Born Again alike (1 Cor 12:15-20), then it computes that faith came with / after the resurrection, the gospel writers have probably read Paul’s views before they embark upon the task of writing their accounts, hence in the more liturgical Anglican churches, we have the practice that the Epistle candle on the altar is lit first, then the Gospel candle, and are extinguished in the reverse order, to signify that the Gospels cannot be read alone without the support of the Epistles. The problem I have with that is: why is the shorter / earlier Mark without the the faith proclamation bit? if the author of Mark had taken the pains to write about a man who has risen from the dead, and Paul had already said Jesus was exalted by his resurrection, why the glum ending of everyone scattering?
In recent years I have come to be quite angry with the faith definition in 1 Cor 15. I can’t believe that faith in Jesus is all about the resurrection event: what about his teachings, his life, his philosophy? Did Paul mean to say without the hope of eternal life as in we will all jump up walking and talking at the final judgment day, there is no point being a good person on ones own feet, a good steward to the earth, a good neighbour to others, and a blessing to those who are close to us? I surely do not live my life the way I do because of the resurrection event. Whether he did rise or not, the Jesus teachings are valid and show us a good way to live. I know in the past 2 millenniums the Christian faith has not fixed the world, but the heart of the love and peace message seems to linger despite the sickness called greed. To me, that is of much more value than a fantastic event to which I can neither subscribe or refute.
In trying to get my head around the concept that Paul believed Jesus preexisted as an angel, reading; Dialogue with Trypho by Justin Martyr provided some assistance. It is offered in PDF format, and by doing a search for the word angel, and jumping to the uses offered some perspective. On page 92, I found Martyr does identify angel as one of the series of identities of Jesus. I’d suggest however, not to just read page 92, but do the full search for angel in the reading as doing so offers some interesting perspective of ancient use of the word.
Yes, I have a discussion of Justin’s angel Christology in the book.
Ahh… haven’t gotten that far yet.
Finally got around to listening to this debate. I didn’t agree with the host who at first seemed to think that you were not yet a full-fledged member of the early high christolology club. Have any of other members questioned your bona fides? I noted the disagreement about 1 Cor 8,6. Is that enough to keep you out of the club? I was confused about what you said about 1 Cor 8,6 toward the end of in the interview because earlier on the blog I thought you had agreed that this verse describes Christ as an instrument of creation so I checked your latest book and there too you understand this verse as indicating that Christ was an instrument of creation as Wisdom (p 268). Have you changed your understanding of this verse since you wrote the book?
I go back and forth on that particular verse. I think it’s hard to know. But in any event, I do think that Paul understood that Jesus was God and was the Wisdom of God who became a human….
Still, that shouldn’t keep you out of the Early High Christology Club. Even Larry Hurtado now seems to acknowledge your membership:
“The notion that there was an early explosion of “high Christology” is now endorsed by, inter alia, Bart Ehrman (in his new book), and I’m afraid it’s just where the data leads.”
http://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/2014/04/05/sense-and-nonsense-observations-on-running-a-blog-site/
Give that man a mug, for God’s sake!
Bart, how do you interpret your teenage born again experience now? Were you misguided or swept up by the moment?
I think most religoius experiences are complicated mixes of emotions, desires, wants, needs; so are most of our deep experiences, for example, of romantic love. If you can dig deep enough you can probably figure out “why” you fall in love with someone, but it’s never because of a single isolatable thing, if you see what I mean.
I see you what you mean! A very complex and indescribable experience or series of experiences.